I do feel for Her Majesty. This ordeal should be foisted on her only after an election. Having to read out the New Labour newspeak was bad enough, but the Brownian argot is dreadful. I do love the way she did it without any feeling – with a wearisome look in her eye – and the way Prince Philip was caught on camera apparently joking about throwing the speech in the bin. It was a pretty bald speech: just 13 pieces of legislation versus 21 in last year’s. After years of worsening child poverty, even by Brown’s narrow measures, he now legislates to “abolish” it by 2020 – as if that will achieve anything. Put that alongside some of the legislation announced for the banks, and it adds up to a whole load of gesture politics.
There’s also plenty here that will please Mr Brown’s trades union paymasters in the form of new regulation for businesses. In a recession, the last thing businesses need is more legislation that will provide a disincentive to hiring, such as flexible working legislation. While the Business Rates Supplement Bill will allow councils a new way to tax companies, again the last thing the economy needs. There is so little to help the economy in the Queen’s Speech, and so much to cause potential harm.
In my political column for tomorrow’s Spectator, I say that the raid on Damian Green’s office was certainly an insult to Parliament – but the worst insults have been made by the MPs themselves, thanks to their behaviour in recent years. Despite the honourable exceptions (Norman Baker, etc), the outside world will see Parliament yet again getting worried about its own privileges. The worst damage done to Parliament’s stature did not come from the Met but from MPs voting to keep the John Lewis list; booting half their powers to Brussels and the Celtic fringe; and failing to use their remaining powers to hold the executive to account.
Consider this: the parliamentary session which the Queen opened today will last for just 128 days out of 365 – ie, more holidays than any session for almost 30 years. Pretty soon our MPs will be off for a 24-day Christmas holiday: the sort of break that the people whose taxes pay their salaries can only dream of. This is what brings Parliament into disrepute. And while our honourable members vent outrage over the Green issue, they should look at the problem in the round. Parliament does need saving. But it will take more than keeping the Met at bay.
P.S. Simon Hughes summed it up well in the House last week: “When people are going to be losing their jobs, for us to be giving ourselves holidays, an extended Christmas and New Year holiday, it is a break from this place, for the House of Commons not to come back to work from July to October, I think out there gives the most adverse reputation to the House of Commons.”
Comments